1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to, for example, a liquid supply apparatus for supplying liquid such as ink to a liquid-jet device such as an inkjet printer, and a liquid container included in the liquid supply apparatus.
2. Related Art
In the related art, an inkjet printer that performs printing by jetting ink from its recording head onto paper or the like is known as a type of liquid-jet device. In order to stably supply ink continuously to the recording head when performing a relatively large amount of printing, this sort of printer may be connected to an external ink supply apparatus (liquid supply apparatus) (Refer to, for example, JP-A-2009-202346).
Such an external ink supply apparatus includes: an external ink pack with a relatively large volume for containing ink; a hanging mechanism for hanging the ink pack; and an ink supply tube. In a state where the ink pack is hanged from the hanging mechanism, the ink supply tube is disposed such that one of the ends is connected to a printer-side ink tank, and the other end is connected via an opening/closing valve to a connecting portion of the ink pack on the lower side in the vertical direction. Accordingly, ink inside the ink pack is supplied through the ink supply tube to the printer-side ink tank.
Incidentally, in the external ink supply apparatus as described above, the connecting portion of the ink pack, to which the other end of the ink supply tube is connected via the opening/closing valve, is positioned on the lower side in the vertical direction of the ink pack. Accordingly, it is difficult to look at the connecting portion of the ink pack and the opening/closing valve when connecting the other end of the ink supply tube via the opening/closing valve to the connecting portion of the ink pack, resulting in the problem that connecting the other end of the ink supply tube via the opening/closing valve to the connecting portion of the ink pack is difficult.
Note that such a problem is not limited to the external ink supply apparatus as described above, but is a substantially common problem to liquid supply apparatuses.